This past week has been one of the most dramatic and politically tense in Brazil’s modern history since the impeachment of former President Fernando Collor de Mello, who resigned in December 1992 hours before being found guilty of corruption by the Senate.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff rushed to swear-in as her newest minister her political mentor former President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva on the morning of Wednesday, March 16. She and the rest of the country had witnessed the huge anti-corruption rallies across Brazil on Sunday, March 13, in which 3.5 million Brazilians took to the streets asking for her resignation.
With herself already facing an impeachment process in Congress for having allegedly misused public funds in balancing the government’s books, she rushed to give Lula some political protection from the massive ongoing Car Wash corruption investigation being led by federal judge Sergio Moro. The thinking within the Workers’ Party was that once Lula was made minister he could no longer be questioned by Moro, and would only be subject to probes and criminal investigation by the Supreme Court.
Lula and Dilma have appointed the majority of the chief justices on the Supreme Court, and were perhaps thinking they would get better treatment there. But do not forget that it is the Supreme Court that led the Mensalao political corruption trial that recently sent to jail many politicians for receiving monthly cash payments from the Workers’ Party to vote in favor of government legislation.
Judge Moro, fearing that Lula was getting away with possible corruption charges, released a series of wiretaps of phone calls made by Lula to President Dilma to a host of other high government officials. Brazilians were shocked to hear him speak with Dilma when a conversation between them was aired on the nightly television news. In the conversation taped on the night of Tuesday, March 15, Dilma tells Lula she is sending him his swearing-in paper that he might need. The implication was that Lula could use the official document to prevent being arrested before he was sworn-in as minister if the Federal Police came for him.
Lula is being investigated for allegedly owning an apartment and a small farm that were allegedly paid for by construction firms involved in the Petrobras corruption scandal being investigated by judge Moro.
With this, President Dilma became the first sitting Brazilian president to have a phone conversation recorded and then aired on national television. Moro justified his wiretapping by saying that Lula was an ordinary Brazilian citizen when he ordered the monitoring. Press reports said Lula has no cellphone number registered in his name, but was using the cellphone of one of his bodyguards.
On Thursday came more surprises. As Dilma swore-in Lula at the presidential palace in Brasilia, a congressman shouted “Shame” at Dilma when she was beginning her speech. He was quickly shut-up and hustled out of the hall by security guards. But the biggest surprise would come later when a federal judge in Brasilia suspended Lula’s appointment as minister, saying that Lula was trying to escape from judge Moro’s arrest warrant by becoming a minister.
Much of this political crisis has become a battle between the judicial and the executive branches of the Brazilian government. Lula criticized and insulted the Supreme Court and Congress in one of his recorded phone calls, saying both had become cowards in the face of Moro’s ongoing investigation. This has led to activist judges such as Moro and others to take swift legal steps to try and stop what they see as corrupt politicians literally trying to get away with murder.
Pro-government rallies had been called for the weekend, and some analysts feared a further polarization of the Brazilian electorate as Workers’ Party supporters clash with those calling for Dilma to resign.
With all of this political chaos and uncertainty, the Brazilian market reacted favorably with the São Paulo stock market rising more than 6 percent in one day on Thursday, and the dollar weakening against the Brazilian real. The business community is largely in favor of the corruption investigations and would like to see Dilma resign. If she did, her vice president Michel Temer of the PMDB party would take over.
While the impeachment process against Dilma will most likely go forward against her in Congress, it could drag on for months and will damage Brazil’s economic and political stability. But Dilma seems determined to hang on, no matter what, despite her disapproval rating hitting 73 percent and around 63 percent of Brazilians supporting her impeachment. This leaves Brazilians with only one certainty: That there is going to be much political chaos and economic uncertainty for months to come.
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The writer is a Saudi journalist based in Brazil.
